It is a late Sunday morning and I walk out to inspect the damage done by a mob of monkeys that has started visiting our area off-late. Not their fault. Their only habitat in this part of town was a 300 year old banyan tree that split apart under its own weight a few months ago. The monkeys, who earlier used to swing from one of the numerous branches of that tree to another, now have no sky over their heads. Fending for themselves from one concrete abode to another, they are now leading a life which will be in perennial conflict with man.

One flower pot was smashed to bits by them while they carried out their procession with part fear and part aggression. I move the pieces of the earthen pot to the side and greet the watchman of the neighbouring apartments.

“Where were you?,” I ask him since I hadn’t seen him around for a few days.

“Madras,” he replied back.

“Why?”

“To fix marriage. Of daughter.”

“Ok. All final?,” I ask him with a smile and in a Kannada that he pretty much understood.

“Yes.”

I decide to not impart the opinion that he shouldn’t get his daughter married so early (she is around 18 years old now). But my opinions are sometimes hard to keep, so I tell him what I think of it anyway.

“What can I do? Everyone else has already committed in this meeting,” he replied back with a sullen face.

“Committed?”

“Yes. In front of everyone, my wife agreed to the relation. Now we cannot go back.”

“Ok,” I say.

“How old is he? What has he studied?,” I venture to ask.

“He is 26,” he shot back with pride. “8th Standard pass” was his response to my second question.

“Ok,” I say. I am now thinking whether I should prevail upon this man that marrying his daughter so early and to a person who doesn’t have much of an education or career is not a good idea. Yet, who am I to decide whether this is a bad thing for the girl? There is a chance that this guy with little education may become very successful in life and give her all that she needs. I conclude that I cannot decide what is good and what is bad for others. In short, I definitely can’t play God.

“Congratulations,” I tell him.

“Thanks sir,” he replies back. “Now I need to give him a bike, he has asked for it,” he continues.

Dowry! Clearly this alliance should not go through. I blurt this thought out to him.

“What to do sir. Everyone has already committed,” he repeats this like a frequently used excuse of a late-coming student.

“Committed?,” I ask again in disbelief.

“Yes sir. People from my family have already agreed to give the bike to him,” he said.

Now something like that cannot be reasoned against, can it.

“Ok. Which bike?,” I decide to venture into other details.

“Hero Honda sir. Hero Honda Splendor,” he shoots back instantly with a smile and adds “Even if he doesn’t know how to ride a bike, we need to give him a Hero Honda.”  The statement breaks his face into a wide grin, his mind perhaps taking pot-shots at a future son-in-law.

By now, the monkeys have returned from their sojourn in the next street. The watchman forgets about the Hero Honday, picks up a long lathi and chases a few of the monkeys away. But some refuse to leave, and tower over us by hanging from the cable TV wires and phone lines.

The monkeys hung around at the top, carefully skipped across the electric wires and headed straight to the kitchen windows of neighbouring homes and stole what they could through the small iron railings.

“Not all monkeys can be chased away sir,” the watchman chuckled as he threw the lathi on to the other side of the road. The monkeys, seemingly in response to that statement, threw bits of eggs and bread down onto the road. The Sunday morning was well through its mid-life by now and I cocooned right back inside home, remembering past images of me riding my bike during my college years. For the record, I used to possess a Hero Honda Splendor of course.

The recent earthquake in Haiti has destroyed the country significantly. A lot of international aid has poured in and at the same time there have been views that Haiti should not get any money, since it is a corrupt nation and the money will not end up where it should.

Nicholas D. Kristof  of the New York Times sets things straight in Some Frank Talk About Haiti.

Haiti isn’t impoverished because the devil got his due; it’s impoverished partly because of debts due. France imposed a huge debt that strangled Haiti. And when foreigners weren’t looting Haiti, its own rulers were.

Do read that article and then come right back to help the Haiti cause by donating to the Doctors Without Borders.

The OPEN Magazine (to which I have taken quite a fancy owing to its insightful articles) carries this article by Hartosh Singh Bal titled Bhopal: The Other Story

On the forthcoming 25th anniversary of perhaps the biggest man-made tragedy of our country, Hartosh writes as to why the Bhopal victims are better off without the hordes of visitors who will fly in to commemorate this rather dark past.

An interesting excerpt:

If you want the truth, don’t pay attention to those who parachute in for a day or two or those who claim to understand Bhopal from London, don’t even take my word for any of this. Go to Bhopal armed with a knowledge of Hindi and see for yourself. Allow yourself a month or two in the city to see how the victims who cannot obtain the medicine they need are helped by a story on the front page of the New York Times or a book on the Booker shortlist.

Read the complete article here.

Amidst a lot of hue and cry over the delay in prosecuting Kasab, here is Amit Desai giving a sane view on Why Kasab deserves a fair trial.

Do read, especially the explanation on why Kasab is being tried under the Indian Penal Code and not under an anti-terrorism law.

Link obtained via Dilip D’Souza.

Yesterday’s Times of India, Bangalore edition, carried this article on how a chain-snatcher was caught by the public.

No doubt its good that a chain snatcher was nabbed, but what got me thinking is this excerpt:

“…some passersby caught hold of one of the chain-snatchers . He was thrashed by the public before being handed over to the police” [emphasis is mine]

Why is it not even a concern for us when we read this? Isn’t thrashing anybody an illegal thing to do? Isn’t the law & order system supposed to take care of the punishment? Yet, why doesn’t the police or even the journalist reporting it raise this as an issue? Or is it that we are happy to have dished out justice as we no longer trust the state and its ways? And this has become a part of our lives. Where does this lead us?

Vir Sanghvi’s article on Manu Sharma and the parole issue.

In the case of Manu Sharma, parole was granted for a reason that is already so unusual as to raise eyebrows — Manu wanted to check how his business was doing. Two other reasons were tagged on. His grandmother had just died and his mother was unwell.The Delhi Police, which was asked to investigate the reasons, reported entirely accurately that a) Manu’s business was doing okay, b) his grandmother had died a few months ago so the rites were over and c) that his mother was fine.

Vir makes an important point with this paragraph of his:

Can it be a coincidence that even after the case hit the headlines, Opposition parties offered only a tepid response? There were no calls for the chief minister to resign. No demands for fresh elections. No jail bharo campaigns, etc.When it comes to its children, the political class is united. It’s them first. And it is the rest of us afterwards.

What is needed the most right now? A political reform? Or an improved judiciary and police machinery? Where do we even start from?

One of the evident side-effects of the Metro construction in Bangalore has been the incessant cutting of trees across all major areas of the city.

If you now take a look at Seshadri Road, Nanda Road and roads around Malleswaram, you will see how a once-lush-green canopy has given way to a bare concrete view. Is there really a need to take away a portion of Cubbon Park? Was there a necessity to chop trees in Lalbagh (which even today stands as one of Bangalore’s integral identity)? The planning and development of the Metro has taken quite a few people by surprise. There has not been enough information shared in the public domain by the concerned authorities. The benefits of the Metro were never really listed out in comparison to other cheaper modes of transport (bus services being one of them).

What has happened so far is that the Metro juggernaut has rolled on, sucking in millions of rupees on its way and destroying the very fabric of Bangalore that had made it a preferred destination for many in the recent past. Democracy, in its definition, somewhere does include the phrase public participation. And voting is just one part of this public participation. The other and more significant part is to ensure that our public servants are questioned on their policies and to have a say in everything that affects us.

Today there was yet another protest against the haphazard construction and destruction taking place in Bangalore in the garb of urban transport management. We gathered at the BMRCL office (on K H Road) and protested with placards and slogans. Leaflets in Kannada and English were distributed to passers by, highlighting the glaring lapses in the Metro execution.

The group Hasiru Usiru has filed various RTIs (Right to Information) and the information obtained is quite far away from what the initial plans of the Metro were. For instance, the Phase 1 initial cost was Rs. 5800 crores and the present Phase 1 cost estimate is Rs. 11500 crores! Add to that the fact that the Phase 1 project is only 25% done and you get a scale of things to come. While the initial plan stated that around 400 trees would be cut, the actual number of trees are more than 1200 – a number that is only going to increase.

While I do not possess the acumen to judge whether the Metro will be beneficial in the long run or not, what I do know is that a lot of this destruction could be saved or at least handled in a better manner. If you are interested in meeting the group and taking part in the protest, please attend the next meeting at Tagore Circle on 4th November at 5:00 pm.

You can find resources and information regarding the Metro at the Hasiru Usiru website.

Here are some interesting links (most of which I had tweeted on Twitter already):

1. First-year Grad Student Wins Nobel Prize in Economics – A brilliant parody!

2. I have No Problem – A wonderful poem, must read. Obtained via Prof. Abinandan.

3. Pathetic, Useless – Dilip D’Souza’s insightful (and witty) article on the logic of MNS hating ‘outsiders’.

4. The Infinite To-Do List – An Entrepreneur’s nightmare! Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.

While reading this post and the letter written there by Prof. Abinandan (whose blog is highly recommended), I was left to wonder about the state of research in my engineering college.

Back then I had just stepped out of school and, admittedly, didn’t know much about college or engineering. Therefore, I was in for a surprise either way. Barring a few exceptional ones, most professors in engineering were keen on focusing on the examination requirements. Engineering never really got taught as a bunch of great concepts. It was taught as a bunch of highly probable questions for which you needed to know the answers. It is little wonder then that “less than 25 percent of our engineering graduates (and less than 15 percent overall) are deemed employable” as Prof. Abinandan puts it.

Except for a very few countable occasions, I do not recall any of the faculty talking about anything outside the book, or anything that they were trying to work on. Most talk was usually centered around the ‘curriculum’. I personally feel that most of my engineering knowledge was made ‘employable’ once I was out of college and started working. If any of you engineers out there feel otherwise, do let me know.

Stepping into a business school a few years later led to another interesting shift in perspective. Here, there was a concentrated effort on making research a part of the faculty’s repertoire. We had professors who were working on various fields of business, economics and finance and who would freely discuss their studies with us, including seek opinions. For someone who was deeply entrenched in the conventional exam-ends-all mode of studying, I found it rather refreshing. However, for the very same reason of having a conventional mode of education, I found it difficult to contribute and further the new and reformative discussions that would happen in class.

If research is made a mandatory part of all educational institutions, I think it would do wonders to our faculty by keeping them refreshed and recharged and also by giving themselves a chance to see something new everyday. This would have a spillover effect of course on the students and lead to increased collective participation in the topics being discussed.

Imagine the quantum of new work that would emerge by virtue of our professors sitting down and researching on stuff rather than just correcting answer papers, as they are currently asked to do.

As much as I respect the Tata group (and consider myself lucky to have seen Mr. Ratan Tata in person way back when I was in school), I think they have gone a bit off the mark here.

Tata Sons has reportedly filed a suit against the popular travel community website OkTataByeBye.com. Infact, a panelist of the World Intellectual Property Organization has declared that the ownership of this domain should be handed over to the Tata group!
Clearly, the usage of the phrase “Tata” in the website is more in line with the colloquial goodbye that we all use. I really don’t think this infringes any copyrights or trademark of the Tata Group.

Please read the appeal put out by OkTataByeBye.com here:
http://www.oktatabyebye.com/support-us/Appeal.aspx

And add your comment there if you think this is a bit overboard.

Tata for now, ladies and gentlemen. I meant the goodbye one, of course.